Avaya triumphant as Nortel winner

US voice vendor to pay more than US$900M for enterprise business.

Avaya has emerged as the winner of the "stalking horse" auction for Nortel's enterprise voice business.

The US-based  vendor has agreed to pay US$900 million in cash, with an additional pool of $US15 million reserved for an 'employee retention program'.

With the auction now out of the way, both Nortel and Avaya channel partners will have opportunities to grow their business as the move to unified communications accelerates and the need for advanced services to design, deploy and manage such solutions expand. 

Pushkar Taneja managing director at GlobalConnect Australia told CRN Avaya's acquisition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions increases the vendor's market reach.

"[This] is good news for channel partners and will ultimately strengthen [their] portfolio, products and services, which was great news for Nortel and Avaya customers," he said.

Pushkar said Avaya's channel partners were in a "good" position to help Nortel customers looking for support in their telephony investments.

However Avaya has to wait before it could say with certainty it was the owner of Nortel's enterprise business.

The sale has yet be approved by courts in the US, Canada, France and Israel. It was also subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and certain post-closing purchase price adjustments.

While the auction win was significant step in the overall sale process, it wasn't the final step for Avaya.

In a statement to the press Nortel said it would work "diligently with Avaya" to close the sale later this year, subject to the timing of regulatory approvals.

The vendor would seek Canadian and US court approvals of the proposed sale agreement at a joint hearing on September 15, 2009.